Tetsuya Nomura x Yoji Shinkawa 2003 Interview

―Nomura and Shinkawa, you are both character designers for series with popular, worldwide appeal... but I believe this is the first time you've sat down together to talk like this?

Shinkawa: The games Nomura and I make are not in the same genre, and they may appear to have a different style and aesthetics too, but I've long been interested in Nomura's career on the grounds that he is a bonafide game character designer―someone who understands the particular challenges of video game character design.

Nomura: Yeah, I played Metal Gear Solid when it first came out, and I remember seeing Shinkawa's designs and thinking, "damn, these are amazing! How am I supposed to compete with this?!" (laughs) The lead character was super cool, and each character stood out in their own way.

Shinkawa: Needing all the characters to stand out is something unique to video games, I think. In anime and manga you have "side characters", but for video games we have to treat each character individually and make sure they contribute to the overall value of the game as a commercial product. I feel like Kingdom Hearts is very well done, in that sense.

Shinkawa: Oh? Why is that?

Nomura: Well, I almost never draw any rough sketches. For me designing is a one-shot, one-chance kind of thing.

Shinkawa: Only one piece of paper?

Nomura: Yeah, just normal copy paper with a mechanical pencil.

Shinkawa: Me too, I also use copy paper. I use brush pens though.

Nomura: Right now I'm using this mechanical pencil I bought in Disneyland, with the Aladdin Genie on it. I sharpen the tip of the pencil to a slant, and try to produce a clean image from the start, in one go.

Shinkawa: Hah, that's an interesting process. (looking at Kingdom Hearts character printouts) Was this thick contour line here done that way?

Nomura: Yeah. I traced the line over and over. (laughs) Then I uploaded it to PC and added the coloring digitally.

―You both studied art in school. What kind of drawings did you make then?

Nomura: I never drew any inanimate objects, just people or animals… I did a lot of drawings of actual people, pop idols from back then. (laughs)

Shinkawa: Nice, idols. (laughs)

Nomura: I also liked Yoshitaka Amano's artwork.

Shinkawa: Me too. I've always thought that's a big thing we have in common. I especially like Amano's work at Tatsunoko, when he worked on Gatchaman… those character designs are great.

Nomura: I went to a school with a dedicated arts department, but Amano himself came from the world of anime, and you can see a remnant of that in his work, you know? And yet his skills as a painter are superb, which is why my art professor recommended him to me then. That's how I became a fan. I knew Amano from his anime work, but that was the first time I had looked at his fine art work, and it had a major impact on me.

Shinkawa: It's rare for an art professor to recommend someone like Amano.

Nomura: That's what I think now, too. Amano doesn't just draw the characters as he's instructed―he adds his own interpretation to them. That approach has influenced me too.

―How did you end up getting into the game industry?

Shinkawa: I'd actually wanted to be a manga artist…

Nomura: Me too. (laughs)

Shinkawa: I went to college and got involved in a manga circle, but some of the people in that group were incredible. If this is the caliber of people trying to get into manga, I thought, I should just stop now, so I gave up that dream. But I still wanted to do some kind of work in the arts, and I shifted my efforts towards games.

Nomura: I'd wanted to be a mangaka for a long time, but I'd never been able to complete anything beyond a few pages.

Shinkawa: Manga can be like that.

Nomura: I realized this was a no-go for me, and I became interested in advertising instead. In advertising, I thought, I could draw single illustrations that would be complete works. Of course, I was mistaken in that belief. (laughs)

Shinkawa: How did you go from that to Square? (laughs)

Nomura: My friend was supposed to introduce me to an advertising company, but they were pretty slow in getting back to me, and I started to panic since I needed to find employment. By chance I happened to be looking through the job ads and I saw one of Amano's drawings. "This is the one!" I thought. And that company was Square. (laughs)

―Did you have an interest in games before that?

Nomura: I wouldn't say I was obsessed or anything, but I liked them as much as the next person. I came from a rural town and was living alone then, so I had zero money to spend on stuff like games and didn't own any consoles. When I was a kid my parents never bought games for me either. (laughs) I would borrow consoles from my friends and play that way.

Shinkawa: I also didn't own any consoles when I was younger. To me, video games were things that you played at your friend's house.

Nomura: Same here. (laughs) I never thought I would last as long as I have at Square, to be honest. When I first joined the company, I worked to translate Amano's concept art into pixel art form, and also did monster design. But after awhile I started wanting to draw my own stuff, and I even thought about quitting the gaming industry at one point... but, well, here I am 11 years later. (laughs) From FFVI on, the substance of my work at Square started to change, and they let me work on character design.

Shinkawa: Ah. Konami let me work as a character designer from the beginning, so…

Nomura: I'm jealous. (laughs)

―You've created numerous characters for Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid respectively, but what is your design process like?

Nomura: For me, it begins with requests from the director… however, at that point the scenario hasn't been finished yet, so he just tells me his image and ideas. For example, in FFVIII, Nojima who wrote the scenario, he had an idea to make a "Nojima-esque Cid." Someone who's always smiling. Then after awhile the story and scenario were finished. And I realized this finalized version of Cid was younger than what they'd first asked me to do, so I hurriedly erased all his wrinkles. (everyone laughs)

Shinkawa: The requests I get are pretty general too. If the requests are too detailed and specific, I can't work… it messes with my creativity and ability to generate ideas. Somewhat ambiguous and vague directions allow me to put a weirder, more individual spin on it. Nomura, do you find it the same?

Nomura: Yeah. When they go overboard with the details it can be harder to draw anything.

Shinkawa: I think the image that a character's name evokes is also important. Who named the characters in Kingdom Hearts?

Nomura: I named them.

Shinkawa: Oh yeah? I thought they were good names.

Nomura: Yeah, and for the Final Fantasy games I worked on, except for FFX I named them all too. Also for The Bouncer. In the beginning the characters didn't have names at all. So naming them was part of the overall design process of building the characters. "This guy is kind of like this, that guy feels like that…"

Shinkawa: Yeah, that happens sometimes for me too. Often, names will come to me naturally while I'm drawing the character. In fact it often happens that I give the characters a different name from what they wrote on the request. Then I send the drawings back to them with my names written conspicuously on the side. I did that during MGS2.

Nomura: Now that's sneaky. (laughs)

Shinkawa: Well, no one wants a dull or lame name. Names are a part of the character design too.

―Nomura, fans are always trying to figure out who the models were for your characters. What's the truth there?

Nomura: Ah, yeah, I get asked about that a lot. Even before the game comes out, as soon as the names get released to the public, people are like "it's so-and-so!"

Shinkawa: And are they totally off?

Nomura: Yeah, always. (laughs) There certainly are characters I model after someone, and there are characters I don't, but no one has ever correctly guessed who the models are.

Shinkawa: Why is that?

Nomura: It's because… I'm a bad artist. (laughs) I mean, I think I could make them look more recognizable if I really wanted to, though. (everyone laughs)

Shinkawa: Making it too obvious would be bad in its own right. (laughs) By the way, for Sora, was the motif of his design inspired by Mickey Mouse? I got the feeling it was.

Nomura: Oh, you noticed? For Sora's coloring, I was very conscious of Mickey Mouse. Since all the other characters are not Square characters but Disney, I wanted Sora's design to be a kind of "grand compilation" of all the characters I'd drawn up till then. So I think he resembles a lot of characters: there's a bit of Cloud, a bit of Tidus, some Sion too. I was very intent on that.

―What other things do you guys pay attention to when drawing characters?

Shinkawa: I believe I read this in a book somewhere before, that you knowingly hand off pictures that you know are difficult to model in 3D…?

Nomura: That's true. I add lots of swaying, moving things to the design. The modelers really hate all those accessories. It would be impossible for MGS though, right? Snake would get discovered immediately with all that jingle-jangle. (everyone laughs)

Shinkawa: I thought the character designs for The Bouncer were excellent, especially the legs. Normally for "cool" characters they make the legs long and thin. But muscular legs allow the motion to shine. I thought that was really well done.

Nomura: At that time at Square, the staff was talking a lot about how to make the characters look cool when they're moving, including the clothes. Originally the characters in The Bouncer looked totally different, but when we tested out jumping and landing animations, we changed them up to the way they are now.

Shinkawa: Do you find the character design process to be different between an RPG like Final Fantasy, and the more action-oriented games like Kingdom Hearts and The Bouncer? I've done more action games than any other in my time, so I spend a lot of time fussing over the details of the characters' backside, since that's the side the player sees the most in game. Especially the butts. (laughs)

Nomura: They're a bit different, yeah. There's no real design limits for RPGs, but in action games you have to make sure it looks good in motion. In RPGs the characters perform a wider variety of movements and actions, so more than movement per se, I focus on making their designs fit into the world and atmosphere of the game.

Shinkawa: You know you're a game designer when you're thinking that much about it. I too think that designs that look good in motion are a very important aspect of what makes a game good.

―Nomura, you worked as a character designer on Kingdom Hearts, but it was also your first time directing. How was that experience?

Nomura: Yeah it was… tough. You have to be the sounding board for everyone's complaints. (laughs)

Shinkawa: How many people were on the staff?

Nomura: Ultimately, we had 150 people.

Shinkawa: Wow, that's double MGS2. We had about 70. How did you manage it all?

Nomura: I believe in delegation. We had multiple section leaders and they managed their own individual areas.

Shinkawa: It's amazing that you were able to unify the visual design with so many people working on it. In our case, even something as small as 7-8 different people working on the design tends to result in a disjointed visual style. How did you handle that?

Nomura: The lead graphics designers for Kingdom Hearts were people I'd worked with before on FFVII, so we had a good rapport. I could communicate the overall vibe I was looking for and trust that they'd get it.

Shinkawa: How long did it take to develop?

Nomura: About 3 years. For the first year though, I was the only one working on the project. I wrote up the initial plans and went to Los Angeles to present it to Disney, showing them what we had in mind.

Shinkawa: You did all the planning docs yourself?

Nomura: I mean I had a full year, but yeah. I know we said this was my "first time directing!", but in reality, after working on it for a year by myself, it was kind of necessary that I take on the job. (laughs) I'd wanted to make something that couldn't be done in the frame of what I considered a normal Disney story, and since I planned it all myself this way we were able to accomplish that.

We talked about using an existing Disney character as the protagonist, but from the beginning I knew I wanted the main character to be non-Disney, with an "all-star" cast of supporting Disney characters. That was one thing I wasn't willing to budge on.

Shinkawa: The gameplay of Kingdom Hearts is interesting too. I had the chance to play it at a Game Show, and it had a fresh feeling, something that was neither a traditional turn-based RPG nor a standard action game.

Nomura: That was also one of my goals from the very beginning. I thought they would get pissed at me if I tried to put a system like that into a Final Fantasy game. So it was an idea I had lying dormant in me for awhile.

―Despite having a cast of Disney characters, it seems the content of the game is decidedly hardcore?

Nomura: My concept for Kingdom Hearts was that it would be a game with a lot of depth, something you could play for a long time. I wanted to try making a game where the player could do anything. Even though Kingdom Hearts is a Disney game, there are quite a few "hardcore" elements that remain. Things where you'd think, we probably have to make this more friendly―we dared to buck that expectation in a number of places. For example, the map is 3D, but we deliberately did not include an easy-to-understand 2D-overhead minimap display.

Shinkawa: That's how older games used to be, right? No minimap etc.

Nomura: Yeah. Originally, getting lost and having to use your head was part of the fun, I think. I do wonder if all the recent hand-holding and over-explanation from developers is really a good thing…

Shinkawa: Kingdom Hearts sounds like an easy game to get lost in, then?

Nomura: It was actually MORE hardcore in the beginning. We had some puzzles in there that would make you go, "what is this, Takeshi's Challenge?" (laughs) We lowered the difficulty a bit, but it still has more bite to it than most mainstream releases today.

Shinkawa: I thought it was going to be an easier game.

Nomura: Yeah. The Disney factor, it's a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing isn't it? (laughs) I think the gameplay is going to defy players expectations in that regard.

Shinkawa: How long is Kingdom Hearts?

Nomura: Our playtesters said their shortest playthrough was 7 hours. Normally it would take someone about 30 hours, I imagine?

Shinkawa: That's a nice amount.

Nomura: Yeah, and there are other Disney characters beyond the ones we've introduced today who make an appearance. For Disney fans it will be a real treat.

Shinkawa: And does Mickey show up somewhere…?

Nomura: …sorry, that's a secret. (laughs)

Shinkawa: The models for Donald and Goofy look great. I'm looking forward to it!

If you've enjoyed reading this interview and would like to be able to vote each month on what I translate, please consider supporting me on Patreon! I can't do it without your help!